


Tell me they died together

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: But you can't expect it to go well either, M/M, World War II, You can't expect them not to fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21410803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: The worst thing isn't dying, because when you die your war is done. The worst thing is being the one left behind because you have to stand up and keep fighting when your reason for fighting has gone.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Comments: 18
Kudos: 68





	Tell me they died together

Tell me, has anyone talked about this:

Newt fought in the first world war. Newt was there with his dragons, Newt was there when they died; Newt was there when they set whole fields of men aflame and Newt listened to them scream as they burned.

Graves fought in the first world war. Graves held shield charms that echoed with spellfire, Graves sent curses back until his hands blistered from them; Graves pulled drowning men from muddy shell craters and Graves stayed with them as they choked and died.

The first world war ended in 1918. Graves went home and stood on a street corner in New York; he looked at the sky and he stood in the rain and all around him were men and women who weren’t fearing for their lives and he promised them that they’d never have to. Whatever it took, he would make his people safe.

Newt left home and travelled; he stood on the edge of glaciers in Patagonia and he stretched his arms to the lupin fields in New Zealand and he laughed at the beauty and the wildness and the sheer freedom of the natural world. I’ll keep you wild, he told the mountains and the ocean, the dragons and the hippogriffs and the thousand creatures in between. Whatever it takes, I’ll make sure you stay free.

Eight years later, they meet. Eight years later, they fall in love. Eight years later, Newt says _I do it to keep them free_ and Graves says _then I will too_; Graves says _I do it to protect them_ and Newt says _then I will help_.

In 1939, Grindelwald conspires with a muggle madman and throws the world to war again.

And tell me, would a man who built everything to protect his people, would he stand back while his people went to war? Tell me, would a man who believed in freedom, would he turn his head when the world was being enslaved?

So tell me then, tell me where they go when war breaks out. Are they in Egypt, driven mad by the sun with the desert rats; are they in Singapore when the call to surrender comes? Were they in Britain when the bombs fell, were they in St Petersburg when the city starved under siege?

Newt doesn’t bring his dragons, nor send for his mother’s hippogriffs. They ask for them, they shout and call him traitor when he refuses but he is firm; creatures will not win this war that man has made. He gives them instead his inventions, his skills; he takes an old jerry can and expands it into a hideout for a dozen men, he takes an empty storeroom and calls forth a river and an orchard of trees. He shelters them and he feeds them and he heals them, and sometimes, if he must, he fights for them - but never with creatures and never with fire.

Graves does bring his shields. He digs them into fortifications and anchors them with keystones and crystal wire; he draws out maps in the hideouts Newt has built and he plans attacks that he knows his people will die in but that he knows more people will suffer for if he fails. He becomes a hard man, one that doesn’t have time to pull individual soldiers from drowning mud and he hates it, he _hates it_ but for every life he leaves a dozen more are saved and he casts his shields until his bones blister from them and all around him people do not fear for their lives because Graves has their backs, Graves won’t let them down -

Graves lets too many of them down and Newt picks up what pieces he can and holds them together, but he doesn’t have healing spells for this. Newt’s magic can only shelter so many refugees and he’s burning himself to cinders just to keep them fed but children still die in his hideouts; Graves kisses him and lists the hundred lives he’s saved as though that will help but there’s no shield he knows of that can keep Newt safe from the ones that didn’t make it.

They limp, broken, desperate, bleeding men through a war that asks more of them than they can give. They limp, leaning on each other’s shoulders for strength, trusting each other to keep them from going mad in the starless night.

They limp until they becomes he and he drops to the ground and keens; they limp until he’s faced with a choice of _hold the shield_ or _protect yourself_ and he chooses to keep his people safe; they limp until he stares with unseeing eyes at the hideouts and the orchards and the hospitals that still need more than he can give and just for that one moment, he doesn’t care.

Newt doesn’t care.

Graves is dead. There are people crying in Newt’s refugee camp. Children without parents, parents without children; they need food and healing and places to sleep, they need safe passage to a different continent and _Newt doesn’t care._

Graves is dead.

The moment passes and Newt buries his grief. He pours himself into his work and he burns himself to dust and for a while no one else dies but it can’t last. His magic runs out. There’s nothing left to burn. There’s nothing left, but Graves is dead so Graves can’t tell him to stop. Newt keeps burning.

His hair goes white. His skin hangs wrinkled and loose. His eyesight weakens to nothing.

He limps, and after a while not even his cane can support him.

People keep dying. Newt keeps burning. Graves is still dead.

He limps until he runs out of time. He burns through seventy years in seven weeks and there’s nothing left; he reaches for the next thing to burn and there’s _nothing left_.

He burns it anyway, because Graves isn’t there to tell him to stop. He burns it until he becomes they and they died in the second world war; he burns until he becomes they who were remembered as the protectors. He burns until he becomes they and they are ashes blown on the wind and a body drowned in mud. 

But tell me this isn’t where they ended when the second world war broke out. Tell me instead that they went to the stars and the depths of the sea; tell me they hovered over New York and chased each other laughing through glaciers, tell me God caught them before they fell -

Tell me, I beg you, tell me lies. Tell me they died together. Tell me they never became he and he never turned to a half of himself that wasn’t there, tell me they were never he and he never closed his eyes as the shield finally fell and whispered, tender soft and lost in the sound of spell fire and curses, tell me he never had to say good bye.

Please, at least tell me this.


End file.
